


Grandmother's Secret

by Maple



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maple/pseuds/Maple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After receiving some sad news, Grandma reveals a secret to her grand-daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grandmother's Secret

"Grandma?" I found my grandmother sitting in the breezeway between the house and the garage. The sun was shining in through the windows and she was slowly moving in the rocking chair, as if sculling in the little pool of sunlight. But she looked tired and suddenly old, and I was reminded that she was nearing ninety.

She looked up at me and tilted her head, as if she had just seen me with new eyes. "Come sit with me for a moment." When I had perched on the bench, amidst the tumble of discarded shoes and boots on the floor, she took my hand and held it tight. Her skin was soft and warm.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She held out a newspaper folded over to an article about a missing young man. Tucked under the article was a business envelope with a single sheet of paper in it that blathered on in lawyer-ese. The gist of it seemed to be that the missing young man, who had been known as Everett Miller when he'd been alive, had been found to be deceased and Grandma was to inherit some slight valuables and mementoes.

"You knew him?" I scanned the article, but it was of a kind, and offered nothing substantive, only speculation and cloying attitudes about such types of unfortunates who went missing.

"It was a long time ago, but yes."

I re-skimmed the material, double checking the young man's age. He'd been barely twenty-five at his death. "It couldn't have been that long ago," I said. I tried to remember if I'd ever met him. I was only slightly older. It seemed to me that I would have taken an interest had such a handsome boy been anywhere in the vicinity. I couldn't recall meeting him, and having grown up with my mom and sister here at Grandma's house after my parent's divorce, I surely would have at least met him once or twice. Perhaps he had come by while I'd been away at college, learning to fall in love with history, a practically unmarketable skill at the moment. Which wouldn't have been "a long time ago", really.

Grandma almost smiled then, and looked sly as a cat. "You young people, you always think you know how time passes. It still seems like forever to you. But it just gets faster and faster, you know. Decades zip by and you wonder what you will have been doing for ten whole years. Where did it all go? But I wouldn't exchange it at all."

"How did you know him?" I asked. I was wondering if there would be a memorial service, and if we should send flowers, or if a card would suffice.

She leaned in very close. "I'll tell you a secret, but whatever you do, don't tell your mother. She'd have a heart attack!" She grabbed my other hand and held them both together, as if we were making a pact. "He was my lover for half a year."

"Grandma!" I leaned back and she released my hands. I didn't know what to say. She and Grandpa had married at seventeen. He'd been a train mechanic and worked on engines all his days, and she'd tended to the house, raising four children. Grandpa had died a few years after I'd been born, and so I didn't remember him. Which meant Grandma would have been dallying about with this man in the newspaper--considering the young man's age--when she was eighty-something. I prided myself on my open mindedness, but I was having a tough time wrapping that pride around this.

She leaned back in her rocking chair with a satisfied air. "It was tough times, then, you know. With the Depression and everything. Your Grandfather worked long hours and we were just glad that he had a job and we had food on the table. I was young and flighty, and hadn't had my first baby yet. He was the grocer at the market where I tried to stretch every dollar, and he flirted like mad. He was so handsome, too."

I didn't know what to say. The ages were all wrong, of course. I'd put it down to grandma being forgetful, but I knew it just wasn't so. Her eyesight wasn't what it used to be, but she was still crackling smart and on the ball. She did the crossword every morning and still balanced her own household account to the penny. "But he's so young," I said. It sounded logical and stupid at the same time.

Grandma pulled out the letter the lawyers had sent her and squinted down at it. "They want me to come by their offices as soon as possible," she said.

"Of course I'll take you," I answered. She didn't drive anymore and relied on mom, my sister, Grace, and I to get her around.

She folded the letter and put it and the newspaper away. She rocked back and forth in her chair for a moment, considering me in a way I found discomfiting. Finally she said, "There's quite a bit more to the story. Why don't you put the kettle on? I think you'll be interested."


End file.
